CAT to have questions on life and relationships to block engineers entering IIMs

Mumbai. After the decision by the new IIMs to award “grace marks” to girls and non-engineering students to help them enter IIMs drew flak, all the IIMs have come together to announce major changes in the syllabus of CAT – the entrance test for admission to the top b-schools of India. Apart from verbal and quantitative abilities, CAT 2011 will now have questions on life and relationships – an area where girls and non-engineering students are expected to perform better.

“B-schools world over have a far more balanced batch composition than the IIMs, which are overflowing with engineering students,” IIM Trichy director Prafulla Agnihotri explained why the original decision was taken, “Further, all reputed global ranking systems give high weightage to diversity, due to which IIMs are ranked lower than most of the international b-schools.”

“Please note that ‘diversity’ is not any random parameter like ‘global exposure’ on which being number one doesn’t matter,” he added.

B-schools have been using picture of girls on their prospectus to attract students, though these girls were never found on campus.

“That’s why we wanted to get a more diverse batch. But it seems that the decision has not gone down well with many people, with some calling it insulting to women and non-engineering students,” Prof. Agnihotri rued.

Prof. Agnihotri informed that post these “outrages” on social networking websites, the directors of all IIMs met and concluded that the real culprit was CAT, which was biased in favor of engineering students with a bulk of questions revolving around Mathematics and Data Interpretation.

“We realized that had we silently changed the syllabus and style of CAT and made it more favorable to women and non-engineering students, perhaps it would not have attracted a similar level of outrage and allegations of being condescending to women,” Prof. Agnihotri explained.

As a result, IIMs have decided to do away with grace marks for women and non-engineering students and instead have decided to include questions on life, relationships, poetry, music, philosophy, et al. in the CAT 2011 question paper.

“Our sources and personal experiences prove that most of the engineering students suck at these topics,” the IIM Trichy director revealed why he believed that a change in syllabus will have the same desired result – to stop too many engineering students from entering IIMs.

An official communication to this effect will be released soon by the IIMs and it will have some sample questions that CAT 2011 takers could expect. Prof. Agnihotri gave Faking News a sample question on request:

Q: When exactly can you be sure that the girl is now your girlfriend?
a) When she allows you to kiss her.
b) When she accepts a Valentine’s Day card.
c) When she smiles at you.
d) When she accepts your Facebook friendship request.

Prof. Agnihotri refused to confirm or deny if Chetan Bhagat would be roped in to frame such questions.